


you're feeding on my energy (i'm letting go of it)

by cirrus (themorninglark)



Series: SASO 2017 [44]
Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Challenge: Sports Anime Shipping Olympics | SASO 2017, Gen, ghosamu
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-22 02:56:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11958255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themorninglark/pseuds/cirrus
Summary: On the third day Atsumu’s gone, Osamu finds the house is terribly empty.A haunting, both ways.





	you're feeding on my energy (i'm letting go of it)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for SASO 2017 Bonus Round 6: Remixes | originally posted [here](https://sportsanime.dreamwidth.org/24968.html?thread=15677064#cmt15677064) | remix of [this art](http://sportsanime.dreamwidth.org/22341.html?thread=13209413#cmt13209413)

_Will you miss me,_ Osamu asks.

_No,_ says Atsumu, without words. _No,_ says the curve on his knife-edge mouth, the press of his forehead against chill air, his breath a pale gloss-pink between careless lips.

_Why would I miss you._ he asks, casual, and it’s a genuine question. He does not mean to hurt. It might hurt anyone else anyway. It does not hurt Osamu.

_Because you’re going away. Tokyo is far._

_But you’ll be with me, anyway._

The touch of Atsumu’s hand on his cheek is a winged thing, trembling to fly. It singes Osamu like lightning, there one second and then gone again the next. When Osamu comes into Atsumu’s room in the morning, he’s already left for camp without saying goodbye.

 

* * *

 

Winter is the easiest season, for Osamu. He’s always been partial to the cold. He likes to watch the frost on the window before anyone else wakes, forming patterns.

On the third day Atsumu’s gone, Osamu finds the house is terribly empty. It’s not that one more person takes up that much space, and it’s not a very big house to start with; it’s just that Atsumu always knows how to be loud enough to drown out all the silence. Still, there is the icy wind that finds its way through the cracks, tears into Osamu and makes him feel alive.

He remembers Atsumu’s parting words when he looks into mirrors, sees Atsumu’s face staring back at him for a moment, sees that smirk flash, sudden, before everything dissolves. Of course Osamu is with him, anyway. How long would they last, without each other?

 

* * *

 

_You’re my best-kept secret, Osamu._

“Mine,” Atsumu murmurs, out loud, and it startles Osamu to hear, for it is rare they resort to voices to speak with each other when everything else is enough, and Osamu never needs more than _enough_. He doesn’t ask for much. When the night is crashing all around them, the roar of a sea-storm rattling the door and Osamu is tired, tired, it is always Atsumu who tethers him to here and now.

Atsumu is not here. Osamu blinks, walks out of the stairwell where the memory still stirs, trapped in a loop. He picks it up, studies it for a while and then puts it on the tip of his tongue, where it melts like a snowflake.

 

* * *

 

Atsumu comes home and life goes on.

Osamu sits on the edge of his bed at dusk, lets him rest his head on his shoulder. His breathing, ragged at first, starts to find a rhythm that’s no longer erratic, no longer a cacophony in Osamu’s ears.

“I missed you, after all,” Atsumu admits.

Osamu’s sigh is little more than an echo, a parting of his lips and a thought that will not form words.

It will be January soon. They go to the temple every year, and Osamu, who never has problems finding Atsumu in the crowd, will send up a prayer next to him, and he will leave before the bells start, for the sound of them strikes him like a thunderclap. If new beginnings are to be hoped for, he knows he has overstayed his time. The feeling has crept up on him like a ghost of his own. And Atsumu is talking aloud to him again, his voice bright as the turn of spring.

_Be well, Atsumu,_ says Osamu, and wraps his arms around Atsumu, presses his palms over his eyes. He can see Atsumu drifting off to sleep as he fades away, the smile on his face so sweet it aches.


End file.
